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Abstract
This dissertation explores the intersections of the English Musical Renaissance (roughly 1880-1920) and the poetry of the Victorian era, approaching musical analysis through the lens of literary close reading and bringing English song into a reciprocal dialogue with current literary criticism in a series of three case studies. Through their settings, the composers prove to be quite prescient, anticipating modern critical concerns and highlighting the subtleties of the language. In this way, the composer plays the role of the literary critic, making their own argument and presenting their own reading of the poetry.The first case study begins with a single poem, Christina Rossetti’s “Song [When I am dead, my dearest]” (1848) and its musical settings by Liza Lehmann (1919), Ralph Vaughan Williams (1903), and Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1904). I consider how each song deals with the idea of a “double poem,” or a poem in which the explicitly stated intention is at odds with the ideas conveyed through the style and form of the text. The second case study broadens to a collection of poetry, examining settings of poems from A. E. Housman’s A Shropshire Lad (1896) by Vaughan Williams (1909) and George Butterworth (1911 and 1912), exploring the ways in which Housman simultaneously presents and conceals queerness within his poetry and how those strategies are altered through musical setting. The final case study examines a large-scale work of poetry, analyzing settings of Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s In Memoriam (1850) by Maude Valérie White (1885) and Lehmann (1899), considering how these composers engage with the vast scope of this work and the ways in which they confront the poem’s complexities and contradictions.
These examples affirm the value of analyzing music through the lens of literary close reading and doing literary close reading through the lens of musical settings. Further, this project advocates for the performance and study of this underappreciated repertoire, especially the works of White, Lehmann, and Coleridge-Taylor, who have been historically underrepresented in scholarship and performance.